Apropos of this thread.... I volunteered to help clean up the median
strips on the street that leads into Quincy from the bridge across
the Mississippi from Missouri. They had received many complaints
about how "weedy" it was. It had been planted in native prairie
plants using state beautification money. Yes, there were some weeds
(dandelion, burdock, etc) but the majority of the prairie plants -
tons of prairie dropseed, echinacea, rudbeckia, coreopsis, etc had
great potential, if people just have patience. I persuaded the city
planner to give it another year and observe the plants and layout,
and if there were still complaints, till some in the middle of the
bed and plant something that might get the complainers off her back,
preserving the rest. Also suggested that the complainers be invited
to come out and contribute on the next "work day"!

Cathy, west central IL, z5b

On Apr 25, 2006, at 2:32 PM, james singer wrote:

Last evening I got an e-mail from a reporter in the Venice bureau
of the Sarasota Herald. She found me via "Dave's Garden." She
wanted to know if she could quote something I'd written on DG about
night blooming cereus. Then she asked me if I was aware of what had
happened to one of 80-year-old night blooming cereus plants in an
older neighborhood on Venice island. I said I wasn't.

Turns out that a woman, Ms. Ruth, now in her 80s, "planted" night
blooming cereus on two palm trees [Phoenix canariensis] in the
median in front of her house in the mid-1940s. I don't know which
genus of NBC they are--they're an epiphyte and their vegetative
body is cylindrical, about the diameter of a hot dog but in much
longer stems. For the last 30 or so years, the annual blooming of
these two plants has been occasion for a block party; many
neighbors gathered in Ms. Ruth's front courtyard at sundown and
waited until the cacti flowers open.

Last year, the reporter told me, the assembled neighbors counted
more than 200 blooms. It must have been beyond glorious.

About a week ago, a young city park's department employee cut the
NBC off one of the palms before he could be stopped. "I was told to
clean up street trees," he said. "And I thought this one was ugly."
Here are two pictures I took this AM; one is of the remaining
"ugly" tree, the other is of the beautified tree. If you know
anything about pruning P. canariensis, you'll find the beautified
tree looks like it was trimmed by Freddy Krueger.